With the ever-increasing popularity of personal mobile devices, e.g., cell phones, smartphones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), personal music players, laptops, etc., ‘mobility’ has been the focus of many consumer products as well as services offered by wireless providers. In the telecommunications industry, ‘mobility’ is at the forefront as consumers are no longer restricted by location with regard to communications and computing needs. Rather, today, as technology advances, more and more consumers use portable devices in day-to-day communications, activities, planning and entertainment. In fact, studies have shown that many people today are opting for mobile phones and smartphones in place of traditional land lines.
As mobile device popularity increases, the ability to make telephone calls, access electronic mail, communicate via instant message (IM) and access aggregated online services such as a calendar appointments and tasks from any location has also continued to evolve. Many mobile devices such as cell phones, smartphones, PDAs or the like enable wireless synchronization with servers, for example mail servers. Accordingly, electronic messages can be sent and/or received via mobile devices by way of wireless synchronization.
In order to accommodate textual input, many mobile devices are equipped with a conventional QWERTY keyboard. The QWERTY keyboard derives its name from the first six letters on the keyboards top row of alpha characters. Although the QWERTY keyboard is the most common modern-day keyboard layout on typewriter and computer keyboards, the layout of the keys does not always translate to mobile applications.
For example, a standard telephone keypad designates specific letters to numeric digits on the touch-tone pad. For example, the letters ‘A’, ‘B’ and ‘C’ are commonly associated with the number 2. Similarly, letters ‘E’, ‘F’ and ‘G’ are commonly associated with the number 3, and so on. When a QWERTY keyboard is used, it is not possible for a user to dial telephone numbers which include letters or words. Similarly, it is not possible to reply to option commands by depressing the corresponding letter, for example, ‘enter the first three letters of the last name of the person you are trying to reach.’
Today, vanity telephone numbers (e.g., 555-HELP) and command interactions are becoming more and more prevalent. However, unfortunately, today's QWERTY equipped devices are not able to communicate in this manner. In other words, the QWERTY keyboard is not conventionally configured with correct mappings to easily translate letters to numbers and vice versa.
Mobile smartphone devices with QWERTY keypads do not have the standard alpha characters on the numeric keys for a variety of reasons. One of these reasons is that the keys are often too small and this would confuse the user with regards to regular alpha entry. Therefore, the user would have to know the translation for phone numbers that employ alpha characters (e.g., 1-800-FLOWERS=18003569377) or refer to a conventional phone keypad to make the translation. This is very cumbersome to the user and therefore reduces the effectiveness of vanity numbers.